Taking control of data

In a geopolitically charged tech landscape, digital sovereignty is crucial for India to safeguard its future — and that of its citizens

- AJAI CHOWDHRY

With 108 unicorns and a booming tech sector, digital adoption in India is accelerating fast, despite its vast and unique demographics, marked by stark contrasts.

The transformative ability of the blockbuster ABCD technologies — or artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, Cloud adoption, and data analytics — is undisputed, and they are increasingly seeping into our daily lives.

We can no longer be complacent about AI's impact on us, whether in retail and hospitals, agriculture or our defence systems.

Yet one of the pressing challenges remains largely unresolved — data sovereignty.

As technology continues to reshape the global economic order, India must realign its thinking and begin with the end in mind: Ensuring that its digital future is not dictated by external entities but built on a foundation of secure, sovereign, and self-reliant data governance.

In the wake of the new trade tariffs and tightened security in sensitive regions like Pahalgam, data security has become more than just a regulatory challenge — it is now a national security imperative.

Cyberattacks targeting Indian infrastructure have surged.

Between 2019 and 2023, cybersecurity incidents reported to the Indian Computer Emergency Response team (CERT-In) surged more than fourfold, with cases involving government organisations alone more than doubling during the same period.

As India digitises governance, banking, and healthcare, even small breaches can trigger large-scale disruption.

The government's plan to make India a semiconductor hub is timely, but without parallel investment in end-to-end data protection — across public, private, and cross-border touchpoints — we risk becoming a data-rich but security-poor economy in an increasingly volatile world.